Cereal Box Saga

Teri, I’m seriously considering your offer. (:

After reading Jeremy’s posts I committed to not make the Walmart runs quite so frequent. As I was first reading them, I thought he was stretching things a bit, but the more I thought through the last couple of weeks, I realized he wasn’t stretching it at all—I had been calling him daily asking him to pick up various items. Yesterday I was determined that we would go Walmart-free. (: I guess that’s just not in the cards for us right now…

Let me backtrack… Wednesday after school, Parker told me he had to decorate a cereal box into a “writing box.” Ah… the first school project! (Actually, as I type that, I realize that’s not true. We’ve already decorated paper dolls for the first graders.) Anyway… I told him to call Jer, because he had already mentioned he was stopping at Walmart after work. (Surprise, surprise.) By the way, not all of these shopping trips have been for food. Sometimes it’s a “Mom, I need a padlock for PE,” or “Mom, we’re supposed to bring a different kind of notebook than what you bought,” or “Mom, I need a zippered pencil box I can put in my folder.” You get the idea…

So anyway, Parker called his dad and asked for a cereal box. It was kind of strange that he had to do this in the first place, as we are a cereal family. We ALWAYS have cereal. TONS of it. But we always stock up when there are big cereal sales and fill the storage room shelves full of it, and it has been a long time since there was a big sale. Currently, we only have the Malt-o-Meal bagged kind.

When Jeremy came home with two boxes of Cracklin Oat Bran, I was so excited. My favorite cereal, hands down. (Even though when we have brought it to church in baggies as a snack, children have been known to ask, “Why are those kids eating dog food?”)

The only problem with this cereal is the size of the box—too small for Parker’s project. Of course. So that evening, after his church meeting, Jer stopped at the store once again. This time he got Lucky Charms. We never get Lucky Charms, at least the brand name, so Parker was excited not only about the size of the box, but for the cereal itself. Score.

Except for one thing. The power went out. His idea to decorate the box from pictures on our computer wouldn’t work. And at this point, I was getting frustrated. It was late, he was supposed to be in bed, and we were working by the light of a candle. We tried some different ideas, but nothing was working. I finally told him he would just have to ask if he could have one more day. It was at this point that he decided to tell me, “Well, I guess that might work, ‘cause I don’t even know if it’s due tomorrow.” Thanks for telling me that NOW, sweet boy!

As it turns out, it wasn’t due until Friday, so we did have another day. And, you’re going to laugh… as I told him to fetch the Lucky Charms box last night so we could get started, Jeremy walked in holding it saying, “You mean, this box?” The box he was referring to was indeed the correct box. Except it had been completely cut up by none other than our sweet Graci. In her defense, she was only following the directions on the back of the box, which was to cut it up to create some sort of game.

At this point, the littles were already in bed and I was already out of gas. Like I said, I was committed to not make any more trips to the store, so I told Parker he would just have to borrow a box from a neighbor. Our cute Parker hates to do things like this, but I told him he would just have to be a man and do it. He went to our next door neighbor. He’s the nicest guy in the world, even if his rooster does wake us up in the morning. (As a side note, that should end today, as he has told us that rooster is their dinner tonight. Whew.) Parker came back with a cereal box, but once again, it was too small. He begged me to go the store, but I said we’d just have to try another neighbor. This time I called first and specified it had to be a big box. He went over to get it. Rice Krispies. In a big box. Except even though it was big (very tall) it wasn’t quite wide enough. Oh well, it would have to work.

We get to work on the computer picking out pictures. His idea was to put funny, crazy pictures of our family all over the box, collage style, with a caption that said, “I get my writing ideas from my unique family.” Pretty cute! We had a ball picking out silly pictures, and stayed up a bit too late doing so. We finally sent the pictures to the printer. After one page printed, the printer stopped. Two cartridges were out of ink. No problem, I think. Jeremy’s always got spares on hand. Except of course, tonight he didn’t. Which meant…

Another trip to Walmart.

Actually, I tried for Smith's first (it's closer) but of course, they didn't have the correct kind of cartridges. I did however, get a box of Corn Flakes that was just the right size!

Luckily, as I was at Walmart walking down the aisles like a zombie, I called my mom, who mentioned the fact that Elli’s birthday is today. A fact I already knew, and had thought of all week, but had spaced that whole day. I needed to get her present and little noise makers to share with her class, making it a good thing that I ended up at Walmart after all. (:

I shouldn’t admit that I sent Parker to bed and stayed up gluing the pictures on the box myself. I usually don’t do homework projects for my kids, but he needed his sleep and the whole thing really wasn’t his fault. It turned out pretty cute!

If you're keeping track, these are the cereal boxes we went through: Cracklin Oat Bran (1st trip to the store), Lucky Charms (2nd trip to the store), Honey Bunches of Oats (neighbor), Rice Krispies (other neighbor), and the winner, good old Corn Flakes. (:

So what do you think, can we make it today without visiting our second home???

--Christianne

PS. I’ll try to come back later to blog Elli’s birthday. We sure love you, birthday girl!!